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Reserve
Text, from David Armitage, Armand Himy, and Quentin Skinner, eds., Milton
and Republicanism. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1995.
Nicholas Von Maltzen, The Whig Milton, 1667-1700
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Milton's republicanism had origins both humanist and religious. For later readers the attractions of the former were often outweighed ------------------------------ [Note] I am especially indebted to Blair Worden for his assistance with this chapter (and related work of mine), which owes much to his essays on republicanism and on Milton in particular. 1. A less differentiating view of its subject limits the value of George F. Sensabaugh, That Grand Whig Milton (Stanford, I952), especially where it touches on his readership after the Revolution. [230]
by discomfort
with the latter. Milton's soaring assertions of God's purpose might
look like so much cant to readers wearied by their I experience of the
Interregnum or wary of its legacy, In the Restoration the distinction
was often drawn between Milton's dubious opinions and his exemplary
learning (especially the fund of fine Latin in his 'prose). Whigs came
therefore to recommend Milton's politeness at the expense of his politics
and prophecy. Religion was often an awkward subject for Whigs owing
to their associations with Dissent; Tories loved to dub them 'fanatics',
charged them with enthusiasm and fomenting rebellion, and identified
them with their Puritan predecessors, From this bad reputation they
were eager to defend themselves, hence their difficulty with Milton,
who looked like a zealot because of his regicide writings and his uncompromising:
self-presentation as a servant of God. Even Paradise Lost might
at first seem too much the work of an enthusiast: Milton's ill fame
fostered suspicions of the epic's devotional aims, and doubts about
the work were compounded by its lack of rhyme and by its humble presentation
in the modest formats of the early editions (1667, 1674, 1678). I -------------------------------
acquiesce in the new regime as much as traditional biographies have claimed. Although he was chastened by his narrow escape in 1660, he never finally retired from the public sphere. In view of the dangers he faced, it is not surprising that his further contributions should have beers discreetly made. But Paradise Lost provided timely advice in the Toleration Debate; it may be seen among the publications greeting the parliament of October 1667 with pleas for a Protestant toleration.(3) This puts Milton at the origin of English Whiggery. Moreover in some of his last publications he again addressed matters central to the Whig agenda. Of True Religion (1673) demands a Protestant toleration at the time of the first Test Act. Milton's bitterness about Presbyterian impositions in matters of faith had led him to articulate his earlier claims for toleration largely against them; in Of True Religion his approach is more Ironical. A contemporary could say of this pamphlet that 'J. Milton has said more for [toleration] ... in two elegant sheets ... than all the pr[elates] can refute in 7 years.'(4) Milton also anticipates Whig concerns in A Declaration or Letters Patents (I674), which contests the Catholic succession by proposing the merits of elective kingship. As Exclusion became an issue, publications favouring elective monarchy came under severe scrutiny: hence the value of this 'neutral' translation of a Polish advertisement for the value of such an election." Martin Dzelzainis has shown, however, that Milton's bad reputation as a regicide writer denied him an effective role in present Milton, could only be a Whig of a peculiar kind. The extremes of his earlier repubIicanism were not easily translated into the compromises of Resloration constitutiona1 thought. Already in the Interregnum he had had to soften his revolutionary claims for popular resistance - such compromise was needed when he came to serve the commonwealth' - and in the longer term the argument of The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates had much 1ess influence than his spectacular expressions ----------------------- 4. Calender of State Papers Domestic, 1675-76, p. 89. 5. The licenser Roger L'Estrange, for example, could later take particular exception to a history that described the Saxons' Election of Kings... The Chiefest for worth, not by nescent', Public Record Office, London: PRO 29/42 x: nr, for. 43. The pertinence of Milton's translation of the Declaration to English politics is therefore quite clear, pace W. R. Parker, Milton: A Biography, 2 vols. (Oxford, rg68),I, p. 638; 11, p. r 15 I; and also CPI·1, vIIr, xiii, 4-42; Christopher Hill, Milton and the English Revolution (London, I977), pp. 19-20 (cf: CPW, VIII, xiii, 596-604). 6. Martin Bzelzainis ,'Milton's Of True Religion and the Earl of Castlemaine', The Seventeenth Century, 7 (1992), 55-6, 64. 7. John Milton: Political Writings, ed. Martin Dzelzainis (Cambridge, 1991), pp.x-xxv. [232]
------------------------------ [233] Milton has in common with the Covenanters an urgent religious imperative, but he had further connected resistance theory with classical republicanism, In the 1660s neither was very applicable in the milder south, and with other republicans Milton may have thought discretion the better part of valour. In England a different kind of opposition was emerging. Anti-episcopal polemic, for example, did not publicly reach anti-monarchical conclusions'" since dissenters pressing for a Protestant toleration did so with high expectations of Charles II, who seemed a likely sponsor of toleration (although fears of royal leanings towards Catholicism complicated these hopes). Even if Milton did not address present issues very directly, what lie brought to the press met with suspicion. The episcopal licenser only grudgingly accepted Paradise Lost in 1667. Roger L'Estrange helped to prune Milton's History of Britain in 1670. Of True Religion (1673) appeared with an anonymous imprint. After Milton's death, the government moved swiftly to obstruct the publication of his state letters and De Doctrina. Seeking to publish Milton's works.on the Continent (with Elzevir in Amsterdam), Daniel Skinner found the enduring scandal of that author enough to draw Joseph Williamson's ire. The reaction to these Literae (which had already found another Dutch publisher, probably through Milton's nephew Edward Phillips) was aggravated by fears that plans were afoot to print Milton's ----------------------------- [234] collected works. The Secretary of State 'could countenance nothing of that man's writings' and forced their retraction from the press, with 'the worried Skinner offering to put 'my copies and all my other papers [from Milton] to the fire'.(11) Through the years others too would find themselves tarnished with 'the ill name [of] Mr Milton's Friendship', both personally and through political association.(12) Whigs had every reason to be silent about Milton or to deny his presence in their thinking. As fears grew about James's succession to the throne, they sought tri alter the line of title and to diminish the 'prerogatives of the crown, Despite their dismay at the growth of popery and arbitrary government, however, their programme until 1681 depended ultimately on royal consent, and even a republican like Henry Neville would present his proposals in a more accommodating language than that of Milton in the Commonwealth. By contrast, their Tory opponents increasingly claimed that Whig ambitions in parliament revived the religious and political sedition of the earlier generation, whose authors might now be recalled to prove the point. Among these Milton featured prominently, and his writings were cited more by foe than by friend. In Tory hands, Milton's anti-tyrannical arguments appeared simply anti-monarchical, and thus might now appall a later generation. His anti-Presbyterian writings also served Tory purposes. Thus Hobbes, while admiring the Latinity of Milton's controversy with Salmasius - they wrote 'very good Latine both, and hardly to be judged which is better' - could deplore the 'very ill reasoning' of both, 'hardly to be judged which is worst.'(13) 'So like is a Presbyterian to an Independent' that they might both feature in those lists of'Milton, Goodwin, Rutherford, and a hundred more' that Tories recited with bitter satisfaction against Whig pretensions. Tories knew, moreover, that both parties had learned sedition from earlier Jesuit authors such as Mariana and Suarez. In the Popish Plot, Titus Gates even testified that 'Milton was a known frequenter of a Popish Club', a claim that at once surprised and gratified Tory pamphleteers.'" The ever-active Roger L'Estrange ---------------------------------------------- 12. Bodleian: MS Rawl, A.352, fol. 295r; E. S. de Beer (ed.), 'The Diary of John Evelyn, 6 vols. (Oxford, r955), III, p. 365; Historical Manuscripts Commission 36 (1911), Ormonde, n.s. 6, p. 335. 13. Hobbes, [Behemoth or] The History of the Civil Wars of England (London, 1679), pp· 229-30. 14. Roger L'Estrange, The Reformed Catholique (London, I679), p. 17; L'Estrange, A Further Discovery of The Plot (London. I680), p. 3; Bodleian, MS Wood f. 49, fol 189r [235] was only the most insistent of those who quoted scandalous passages from the Tenure and Eikonoklastes, the latter "using special outrage the 'bitter invective' of 'a needy Pedagogue', that 'villanous leading Incendiarie John Milton' whose 'bloody Schoole of King-killing' Tories recalled with horror.(15) L'Estrange also warned of the Whig threat to the kingdom by advertising the historical parallels between present sedition in 1679 and past rebellion in I641, not least in his publication of the Digression from Milton's History of Britain as Mr John Miltons Character of the Long Parliament and Assembly of Divines (1681 ). After the abolition of the last Exclusion (Oxford) Parliament, Tory polemic charged the Commons with its failings, and L'Estrange and others were pleased to have Milton available as a critic of parliament and Presbyterianism.(16) Whigs were therefore reluctant to name Milton, even when they found him serviceable. Suppressing his name might save Milton's arguments from his reputation. This shows clearly in a few tracts and may be supposed in a number ofothers. Eager that the Licensing Act be allowed to lapse in 1679, for example, Charles Blount could tailor Areopagitica for present purposes, but even as he drew on Milton's text at length he only once conceded the least obligation to that work, and this only when he used the most memorable of phrases from his original ('as good kill a Man, as a good Book'), thus disguising the wider debt. A less Whig author was even more reluctant to cite such a source: William Denton failed to note Milton as the 'J. M.,' of the admirable Treatise of Civil Power, and also drew much on Areopagitica without acknowledgement.(17) Two decades later, country Whigs could similarly revive Areopagitica. In yet another licensing controversy, still without acknowledgement.(18) Even when Milton proved useful, therefore, his notoriety as an anti-monarchical writer made any positive reference to him impossible in the polemics of the day. Thus a ------------------------------- 17. A Just Vindication of Learning (London, 1679), p. 3; William Denton, Jus Caesaris (London, 1681), pp. 1-3, 67, 'An Apology for the Press', pp. 1-9; Sensabaugh, That Grand Whig Milton, pp. 56-65. 18 Matthew Tindal, A Letter to a Member of Parliament (London, 1698); E. Sirluck, 'Areopagilica and a Forgotten Licensing Controversy', Review of English Studies, 11 (1960). 26o-74. [236] bad reputation helped narrow perceptions of Milton, and much contracted his legacy.
and the uprighter
Part have the Power of the People, how shall we ; know, or who shalljudge
who they be?' The second difficulty lay in ' Milton's hostile view of
the arbitrariness of power, and in his claims for liberty. Filmer thought
power arbitrary by definition,(20) and his argument with Milton exemplifies
the logic of his influential Patriarcha, or the Natural Power of
Kings (I680). Tories seized on his patriarchal theory for passive
obedience and made it a central tenet in their doctrines of sacerdotal
kingship. The bitter denunciation with which Milton's regicide tracts
had long met was now to be renewed, as 'Tories sought to style Whigs
as sacrilegious republicans, the enemies Of Whig writers who responded to Filmer the most significant was Locke, and questions about power and the people lie at the heart of his inquiries. In the evolution oflocke's position Milton had more of an influence than has been recognized, although it may have been only indirect and cannot be determined with much confidence. Locke knew a number of Milton's works and much admired his Latinity owing to a familiarity with the Defensio.(21) In the 1660s if not before, he must have found Milton congenial reading. The radicalism of Locke's Two Treatises (I690) is now agreed upon by scholars, even as they propose different dates for its composition (1679-83, revised 1689). Though there is
no necessary connection, Locke's resistance theory shares much with
that of Milton's Tenure (it is suggestive that he should later
have known Milton to be the author of the anonymous Pro Populo Adversus
Tyrannos, 1689, an adaptation of the Tenure.(22) What remains
of Locke's First Treatise answers Filmer in detail, and shows
a close knowledge of Observations, including the section on Milton,
as well as of Patriarcha.(23) ---------------------------------------- [238]
For Whigs some form of revolution seemed more necessary as the 'Stuart revenge' gathered force in the early 1680s. Filmer's views on the Defensio seem to have prompted other readers to return to Milton's illegal work. In 1682-3 two Whigs were seen to use the Defensio as their guide in developing seditious arguments about church. and state: Samuel Johnson sought to undermine 'the ------------------------------------------- [239]
------------------------------------------- [240]
The failed revolution of 1683 was the nadir in Whig fortunes and in Milton's posthumous career. With the discovery of the Rye House Plot and the prosecution or flight of its perpetrators, real and imagined, Whig hopes seemed doomed. Wider reaction to the Plot included the Oxford Decree of 1683, with its proscription of Milton's regicide writings and the consignment of further copies of his works to the flames. L'Estrange's was only the loudest of the many voices
[241] In the 1680s, therefore, Milton was loathed by Tories, and Whigs refrained from naming him despite his relevance as they evolved their positions. The exception was the slow recognition of the importance of Paradise Lost. Here Tory poets such as Dryden and Oldham were able to respond more freely to Milton's example than their Whig counterparts. More accessible than Paradise Lost, for example, was Dryden's State of liznocence, a fashionably dramatic reworking of the epic in rhyme, which very much outsold Milton"s original in this period. Still more remarkable is that some Tories associated with Christ Church, Oxford, that bastion of reaction, played an instrumental role in illustrating and promoting Tanson's famous fourth edition of Paradise Lost, the subscription folio that finally appeared in I688.(31) This publication marks a new synthesis, beyond the contest of earlier faction. In part it reflected the distinction that could be made between Milton's prose and his poetry. But this handsome edition, which did so much to secure Milton's growing fame as an epic poet, also may be seen as a product of the 'Anglican Revolution' in the later 1680s, (32) that profound change of political and religious alignments under James II, which soon would be further transformed into the Whig triumph of 1688-9. In the subscription list for the 1688 folio may be seen the common rallying of Whig and Tory behind a national Protestant poet, a cultural bulwark against the oppressive Catholicism of James. His succession to the throne had finally forced Tories to make common cause with their Whig coreligionists, The deep conflict this produced in Tory ranks would last for decades. But the Whigs' success would occasion conflicts in their ranks as well, with notable consequences for the Whig Milton.
---------------------------------- [242] have described how the Revolution Settlement forced Whigs, moderates and Tories to decide whether the reign only of James II was to be repudiated, or whether other resentments of Charles II might also govern a new constitutional settlement. Generally, the former course prevailed. Only the more extreme Whigs attempted any wider polemic against the Stuarts or the crown itself, and only in this quarter did Milton's complaints against Charles I enjoy much favour. In the Revolution of 1688/9 Whig publishers prepared for a new edition of his complete prose. But it did not soon appear. The triumph of 1688/9 proved a more conservative one than that for which many Whigs of the 1680s had worked and suffered. Only the radical Whigs who found themselves disappointed in William's rule ever much articulated the extreme resistance theory of Milton or Locke. Their claims were for the most part muted until the rise of the country party later in the decade, In the 1690s it was Milton's poetry that had a more receptive audience on the strength of the folio edition of Paradise Lost (1688). In the flowering of Whig literary culture in the 1690s (such as it was), Milton came to have a wider appeal not because of his politics but because his politics might now be more readily overlooked. The challenge was to transform Milton from a republican to a Whig moderate enough to applaud the Revolution Settlement. Nahum Tate, far example, could now imagine Milton posthumously abandoning his republicanism and instead praising William's royal government:
Tate acknowledges the tension between Milton's commonwealth legacy from mid-century and the present state of affairs. He nonetheless enlists Milton as a proponent of the providential arguments for William's succession. The year before, Tate had dodged the issue in A Pastoral Dialogue, in which his ambitions for a national poetry take him to 'Elysian Bow'rs' where, like Ferdinand the Bull, a pacific Milton 'on Eternal Roses lies, I Deep wrapt in Dreams of his own ------------------------------ 34. Nahum Tate,
A Poem, Occasioned by His Majesty's Vovage to Holland (London,
1691), p. 5. [243]
The growth of Milton's influence appears more strikingly still in Sir Richard Blackmore's Prince Arthur. An Heroick Poem in Ten Books (1695), which draws heavily on Milton's example, especially in its description of the historical origin of its action in Lucifer's ancient rebellion and the fall of man, which lead to our redemption in Christ but also to Lucifer's later attempt with the Saxons to quash British Christianity. Readers in the 1690s were quick to observe the debt and to prefer Milton's original: 'Instead of this', wrote one in mounting exasperation, 'Read Miltons Paradise Lost.' Despite his debt, or because of it, Blackmore conspicuously fails to mention Milton in his Preface, where he reports on the challenge of epic 'that no one for near seventeen hundred years past has succeeded in it'.(39) But in this and later epics Blackmore's imitations show Milton beginning to emerge as the major poet in the Whig tradition. Others responded to Paradise Lost with more critical tributes and parody, especially in collegiate verses where Tory suspicions of Milton combine with a lively interest in his poetic example, which soon came to replace that of Cowley
[245] whether for versification and or fuller narration and description. Here, in Johnson's phrase, the young poets might achieve 'a momentary triumph over that grandeur which hitherto held its captives in admiration.(40) Even as Milton's
poetry grew in fame, his prose was less valuable for the times than
more radical Whigs might have wished. At the revolution the booksellers'
response had been almost immediately to attempt the publication of Milton's
complete prose, consistent with the re-publication of other Interregnum
tracts at this date.(41) As early as 30 January 1689, Awnsham Churchill
registered a collection of Milton's works as licensed for publication."
There are a few notable omissions in this list: the Tenure and
Eikonoklastes are missing (both of which would find separate
publication within the year, but without an imprimatur), as well as
the History (less Whig than might have been wished, and of a separate
copyright), and The Judgement of Martin Bucer (also in another bookseller's
hands). There were to be two editions of Milton's complete prose but
these only appeared late in the decade, when new political controversy
contributed to interest in his work in 1697-8. Instead, the earlier
publication history of the regicide tracts repeated itself the revolutionary
opinions of the Tenure (1649) now reappeared in Pro Populo Adversus
Tyrannos (1689); then the lasting cult of the Eikon was again answered
by Eikonoklastes (I690); and the subsequent French translation
of Salmasius' Defensio Regio (1691) met with an English translation
of Milton's Defence of the The publication of the anonymous Pro Populo Adversus Tyrannos in 1689, was sufficiently risky that its imprint ventured the name of neither printer nor bookseller, and only a few years later did the trade publisher Randal Taylor advertise it as 'The Right of the People over Tyrants, by John Milton'.(43) This version of the Tenure has been described as 'an effective Instrument of Williamite propaganda', but the radicalism of Milton's theory of popular resistance finally leaves
42. G. E. Briscoe (ed.) , A Transcript of the Registers of the Worshipful Company of Stationers from 1640-1708. A. D., 3 vols. (London, 1913-14), III, p. 345 (30 Jan. 1688/9). 43. Alicia D'Anvers, Academia (London, 1691), p. 68; Edward Arber, ed., Term Catalogues 1668-1709, 3 vols. (London, 1903-6), II, p. 361; W. R. Parker, 'Milton on King James the Second', Modern Language Quarterly, 3 (1942), 41-4. A trade publisher like 'I'aylor was often used for 'concealment and convenience' in selling topical tracts: Michael Treadwell, "London Trade Publishers 1675-1750', The Library, n.s. 6, 4 (1982), 104-16, 120-1. [246] Radical Whigs were also responsible for the re-publication of Eikonoklastes (1690). Milton's fame as a scourge of Charles I, and thus of Stuart kingship, made him especially useful to those who sought to impugn not only James II but also his brother, father and grandfather before him. The reappearance of Eikonoklastes enraged Jacobites and occasioned bitter quarrels over the memory of Charles I. Of course the renewed animus lay in James's present case. The authorship of the Eikon Basilike had long been subject to suspicion as well as to heated defence, and had often occasioned hostile comments about Milton.(46) I, anniversary sermons each 30 January, churchmen lamented the execution of Charles I and extolled the royal portrait; conversely, 'in Derision of the Day, and Defiance of Monarchy' some dissenters might even celebrate the execution of the king by drinking off toasts from a 'calves-head'. Milton's regicide writings, anathema ---------------------------------------------------- [247] to Tories, were
'in Deliciis' with these 'Calves-head' Whigs.(47) Controversy rekindled
because in a 'Memorandum' now published with Eikonaklastes the late
Earl of Anglesey had testified that the Eikon was not Charles I's work,
as many had long known or sblspected. Much violent debate followed,
in which Milton's name often surfaced, with reference either to his
discovery that 'Charles' had stolen Pamela's prayer from the arcadia
or to his scathing evaluation of Charles as a possible author of the
Eikon. The 'Calves-head' Whigs were delighted to explore the matter,
notably in a series of pamphlets putatively written by General Ludlow,
the old hero of dissent, two of which draw on Eikonoklastes (1690)
and three of which share its spurious Amsterdam imprint. When Jacobites
consulted Eikan Basilike, Whigs could consult Eikonoklastes.(48)
Tories might deplore Milton, and note his fluency whenever his 'Argument,
and his deprav'd temper met together', as for example with Satan in
Paradise Lost.(49) But to recall Milton was to risk reviving
him. Thus the eccentric Edmund Elys, ever spoiling for controversy,
now hastened to write his 'Joannis Miltoni sententiae Potestati Regiae
Adversantis Refutatio' in 1690, but failed to publish it until a decade
later when the Whig publication of the 1698 Complete Collection renewed
'the villain Milron' as a polemical presence. In 1690 the question was
whether Elys judged the 'publishing of this response] at this time proper
& seasonable'.(50) For the rest of the decade, the controversy allowed
Jacobites to comment on the succession but also invited radical Whigs
to pour scorn on the Stuarts and argue anew for limits on the powers
of the crown. ----------------------------------------------- 48. Richard Hollingworth,
A Defence of King Charles I (London, 1692); A Letter from
General Ludlow to Dr. Hollingsworth (Amsterdam, I692), pp. viii,
31-49; Ludlow No Lyar (Amsterdam, 1692), p. xx; G. W. Whiting,'A
Late Seventeenth Century Milton Plagiarism', Studies in Philology,
31 (1934), 39-50; Edmund Ludlow, A Voyce from the Watchtower,
ed. A. B. Worden (London, 1978), pp. 19--22, 34-41, 50-1. [248]
Now in preparation were the two folio editions of Milton's prose, of which the merle important is the great Comlblete Collection (1698). As with Eikonoklastes(IGgo) and the Ludlow pamphlets, the identity of the editors of this 'Calves-head' edition of hlilton's prose remains obscure. His nephews Edward and John Phillips appear to have assisted, and John Toland is likely to have had a supporting role (he also has been associated with the Ludlow pamphlets, which he echoes in Amyntor: or a Defence of Miltons Life (1699). Collectively, the political impulse: behind, these publications is unmistakrtble, not least a sharp dislike -of the Stuarts and also growing misgivings about William III and the Revolutian Settlement. The first volumes of the Complete Collection ( 1698) feature a series of separate title pages I for Milton's English works all dated I694, giving Amsterdam as their place of publication although they are printed in London ------------------------------------------- 52. Le traité
de l'autorité royale (Paris, 1691); Erich Haase, Einfuhrung
in die Literatur des Refuge (Berlin, 1959), p. 82. [249] (consistent with earlier 'Calves-head' productions). The latter ruse has been thought to reflect concerns about official reprisal, but it may also have been an attempt to evade some awkward question of copyright. The Complete Collection issued from the printer John Darby, Whig and dissenter, who was later to advertise the work and, who cooperated closely in the 1690s with the Whigs likely to have been its editors, and especially with Toland who finally supplied the prefatory biography for this edition, dated 3 September 1698.(55) The copyright for many of Milton's works ,belonged instead to Joseph Watts, who in a contract with Elizabeth Milton in 1695 extended renewed claims to Milton's prose, perhaps owing to fears of losing his property, or to prevent the other imprint -it is suggestive that, now 'too the owner of Milton's History should have re-published that work. That Watts had no part in Complete Collection appears from his failure in his 1695 contract to mention in his list of 'Mr. John Miltons Works' a number of the titles already printed in the 1694 volumes. Instead his incomplete list of Milton's titles corresponds exactly to the less complete English Works published in 1697 (which omits of Watts'g properties only the Latin titles).(56) The separate publication of Phillips's version of the Letters of State (1694) may reflect frustration at a delay in publishing the 'Calves-head' prose with which it shares the 1694 imprint. The Letters allowed him in his prefatory 'Life of Mr. John Milton' to provide an admiring Whig portrait of his uncle, as if a corrective to that which had recently appear'ed from the Tory Anthony Wood (Athenae Oxonienses, 1691). Phillips's biography does not much refer to Milton's verse here, even though he had helped prepare the text of Paradise Lost and now published for the first time the 'republican' sonnets praising Cromwell, Fairfax and others, but if his 'life' was designed to preface this editions of Milton's prose it was to be displaced by the more sophisticated and politically pointed biography by John Toland (55) Among his sources, Toland drew on the papers and the assistance of the Phillips brothers as well as James Tyrrell. Complete Collection (London, 1698), pp. 5-6, 44; R. E. Sullivan, John Toland (Cambrdige, Mass., 1982), p. 6. ION 1694 Edwdard Phillips implies some editorial activity in connection with the History: Helen Darbishire (ed.), The Early Lives of Milton (London, 1932), p. 75. Toland seems likely to have intruded the further 'Calves-head' material hostile to Charles I that disrupts the original pagination of the Complete Collection (pp. 527-8, 525-6, 527-8). 56. Bedfordshire County Record Office, Bedford: MS P11/28/2, fols. 309, 313-315. I am grateful to Peter Lindenbaum for sharing with me before publication his article on Watts's contracts for Milton's prose, although I differ from him in arguing that they lead to the 1967 Works of Mr. John Milton (rather than the 1698 Complete Collection). [250] Already in the early 1690s Toland seems to have been among the 'Calves-head' republicans, and he emerged as a writer of unusual hair as the decade progressed. With the printer and bookseller Darby he had a standing contract to write and translate works supportive of their common cause."' The 'Life of John Milton' shares with other of his works a combination of lively synthesis and some unreliability, much shaped by his republican and deist aims. He wrote the 'Life' as a contribution to controversy, and it was as such that if was read by many of his contemporaries. Toland's critics observed how far he had foisted upon Milton a portrait of himself: he either shared Milton's opinions or imposed still worse ones on 'so great a Man'.(58) Toland could here address the causes of the hour: for example, several references in the 'Life' reflect the country Whigs' interest in reducing or eliminating the standing army after the Treaty of Ryswick (1697), and even as Toland prepared his biography Milton's style already influenced another tract from his hand against standing armies, The Militia Reform'd (1698). Toland's 'Life' does not much emphasize Milton's resistance theory or republicanism As if reluctant to provoke unnecessary outrage, Toland professed a Whig acceptance that 'our Constitution is 'a limited mix'd Monarchy', although the degree of limitation remained very much in question. He disliked Milton's emphasis on men and not laws.(59) He may also have resented the oligarchic character of Milton's republican proposals at the Restoration; in reaction to the Junto Whigs Toland instead advertised Harrington's plans for rotation and produced his great edition of that better republican's works. But Toland's admiring 'Life' of Milton was influential because he was able to animate his subject, and provide a more rounded portrait of the poet and controversialist. The Complete Collection thus offered all of Milton's prose but also an enriching sense of the exemplary life in which these works had their origin. If Toland's now seems a narrow view of Milton, and especially of Milton's religion, he nonetheless began the work of restoration in which the scope and vitality of --------------------------------------------- 58. Remarks on the Life of Mr. Milton (London, 1699), pp. I-2, 12-14. 59. John Trenchard, Argument (London, 1697), pp. 12-3; Toland, Militia Reform'd (London, I698), p. 11.
Toland was eager to doubt the reliability of'authoritative' texts, since this permitted him to insist instead on the authority of reason, not tradition. Rationalism in religion might follow from a wider toleration, and a second purpose in his writing about Milton was to impugn priestcraft by means of Milton's anti-clericalism. Here he again followed the logic of his Christianity Not Mysterious (1696) in decrying the abuses of church and state, as he anatomized how the powerful advance their interest by fostering unreason in the population at large and then by manipulating its fears; thus it was useful in the 'Life' to dwell on Milton's Aristotelian observation 'that the deepest Policy of a Tyrant has bin ever to counterfeit Religion).(61) Toland's object was finally to debunk sacralism, and to this end he quoted from Of True Religion especially in favour of toleration. His views would soon find a wider audience through the second edition'of the Huguenot Pierre Bayle's compendious Dictionnaire historique et critigue (1720 [ 1697]), where Bayle added much from Toland to his entry for -------------------------------------------- [252] Milton in successive editions of this influential work, Milton first appeared as a regicide, but then also as a supreme defender of' la Tolerance). Milton might now be seen as a deist avant la lettre, and as a professor of reason against royalist impostures such as the King's Book. This Whig Milton now had an established reputation as a poet, with Paradise Lost to the fore as 'un des plus beaux Ouvrages de Poesie que l'on ait vu en Anglois'.(62) As a tolerant Protestant and writer of the national epic, M'ilton was increasingly redeemed From the darker associations ofmid-seventeenth-century fanaticism and partisanship. IV 62. Pierre Bayle,
Dictionnaire historique et critique (Rotterdam, 1720), pp.1987,
1991.
that he resented in both priestcraft and enthusiasm.(64) The last and much the most influential of these Whig voices was that of Joseph Addison. Like Shaftesbury, Addison disliked enthusiasm; like Dennis, he deeply admired Paradise Lost. In his historic series of essays on Paradise Lost, which lastingly established it as the national epic, Addison trimmed the poem of its excesses, so that it no longer seemed the work of a regiside writer or poet-prophet. Bringing its classical dimension to the fore, and sharing with his readers his own bland theology, Addison also emphasized the visual imagination governing the poem. He demoted questions of doctrine, shunned controversy, and defined even the epic poem as primarily a literary undertaking, the truth claims of which were subordinated to his narrower vision of poetic excellence. Thus the Whig Milton, in the reign of Queen Anne and after, could become a more professional man of letters, a commercial property of special value to Addison's associate the publisher Jacob Tonson. Milton's voice, if a national one, was also one more and more constrained to the diminished sphere of poetic discourse. The republican Milton, Latin orator,strident pamphleteer, servant to the Commonwealth and poet of a stern and urgent Christian vision, became a literary figure of a milder sobriety, increasingly freed from the languages of action and revelation.
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